


you thought the art was pretty (i thought you were prettier)

by guanlin



Category: Kpop - Fandom, SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Gallery au, LMAO, M/M, idk like, its happened again, kind of photography au, this ship is so underrated, whatever idk homies go for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 12:32:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8014108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guanlin/pseuds/guanlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reds and pinks and blues and greens bounce off of his skin and illuminate Hansol’s features, reflect off of his eyes. Chan takes a moment to appreciate how handsome he is. He’s not ‘generically’ handsome. It’s a sort of quiet thing.</p><p> </p><p>or:<br/>what happens when you put two boys, lots of cliche social media references and an art gallery in the same place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you thought the art was pretty (i thought you were prettier)

**Author's Note:**

> hi guys, so im back with my wordvomit. i actually did this instead of doing my homework and now im freaking out as im writing this because i havent done it. this ship is so underrated and deserves so much more love!! this fic is vaguely based off of that one photo of Chan and Hansol taking pictures of each other. 
> 
> as always, hit me up on my tumblr @jeongquq if you have any questions or want to request any little tidbits from this piece, im more than happy to write more! also, if you have any complaints, come to me there as well. hope you enjoy!!

Lee Chan begins regretting his whole life when his really fucking annoying alarm starts blaring down his ear at six thirty in the morning. Chan’s ‘best’ friend (“Darling Chan, you know that I am your only friend”), Seungkwan had set it to him obnoxiously belting out some love ballad at the top of his, apparently very large, lungs. Seungkwan’s voice had been so loud on the recording that the very high quality speakers of Chan’s iPhone six s had crackled and Chan had shot up and quickly turned it off, very concerned for the health of his pride and joy, muttering a string of very colourful curse words as he did so. Chan sat on the edge of his bed and decided he would return Seungkwan’s favour. Smiling slightly as he entertained the idea at getting revenge on Seungkwan, chan reached for his phone and pressed Seungkwan’s contact. If Chan knew one thing about his best friend, it was that, whatever time of day, if his phone went off, seungkwan would always, always answer it. The phone rung for a while before Chan heard the feedback from Seungkwan’s side.  
“You better be dead or dying,” was what he was greeted with.  
“Good morning!” Chan chirped and he must have done it incredibly loudly because his roommate, Mingyu, knocked on the wall twice -one of the most frequently used phrases in Mingyu and Chan’s language which meant, to put it nicely, “shut the fuck up you sorry excuse for a human being”. Chan had to use this most when Mingyu’s boyfriend, Wonwoo, was round.  
“Fuck you,” Seungkwan spits down the speaker, “You know I can’t get to sleep again once I’ve woken up.”  
“Precisely,” Chan says.  
Seungkwan ends the call.

*  
The reason Chan had to get up so early was what pissed him off most. It was for art history, a class he didn’t even want to take but had to if he wanted to make it as a photographer. His Professor, a wrinkly old man who smelt like ‘death and life regrets’, had assigned every student in the class a different art gallery across Seoul to go and visit and take arty photos and write essays and feel empowered and shit. Due to Chan’s fucking awful luck, he was assigned a gallery almost on the other side of Seoul, meaning he had to travel on a bus for two hours, wrap everything at the gallery up and make it back to his college campus by his four pm class. Hence, why he was up at 6:30am. He’d get to the gallery at their opening time at nine, spend a couple hours doing what he has to do then return home with a few hours to sort out his pictures and eat lunch.

Chan showered and dressed quickly and was out of the house by 6:50, camera around his neck. He knocked once on Mingyu’s door, letting him know he was going so when Mingyu got up he didn’t think he’d been kidnapped. Seeing the streets completely empty was a rare commodity seeing as Chan, like the rest of the residents of the apartments round here, is a student, meaning the day begins eleven am at the earliest. The sky is a block of grey and blends almost perfectly with the buildings that towered above Chan. Everything sort of feels surreal, like everyone else has been abducted and Chan is the last human being on earth. He kind of likes it like that. Chan, being the actual tumblr kid™️ that he is, snaps a few pictures and then proceeds to walk to make his way to the bus stop at the end of the street.

The bus, when Chan gets on it, is devoid of people except for an old ahjussi in the corner, who is dozing softly against the window. Chan pays the driver, bows, and makes his way to the back of the bus. He takes advantage of the bus in its almost-empty state and snaps a few shots of the yellow strip lights flickering and their reflections in the grimy windows. The boy briefly wonders if adding pictures of the journey to his portfolio will get him any extra credit. He decides extra pictures won’t do any harm and snaps a few pictures of the ahjussi.

Chan enjoys taking pictures of people when they’re not expecting it, likes taking pictures of real, true reactions and expressions. He finds he can look at the pictures later and tell exactly what’s going on in their minds, when the pretence that all is well that people put on when photos are being taken of them with their knowledge is non-existent. It’s not creepy, he always shows them to the people afterwards, asks them if it’s okay that he uses them and even takes their emails sometimes so that he can send them the results. It’s gotten him punched in the face, like, twice but Chan supposes it’s all for the quality of pictures (he usually gets revenge on them by using the pictures anyway in the most public way possible). Chan slides over to the ahjussi to ask her if he can use the pictures. The answer is a sweet smile and a ‘why of course, young man. Aren’t you lovely?” and Chan inwardly sighs because he knows he’s going to spend the rest of the journey talking to the old lady.

* In retrospect though, talking to the woman helped speed up the journey and Chan was suddenly bidding goodbye to the lady with a fleeting hug and polite bow and stepping onto the sidewalk in front of the gallery. It was a fairly big one, with lots of modern pieces of art. It was the kind of place the people those instagram accounts called like a normal word only with one of the letters replaced with a v would go to and then post them with emotional quotes or the star emoji as the caption. Although, Chan had heard there was a massive room in there dedicated to neon signs so he was very much looking forward to photographing those.  
“Chan?”  
Said boy snaps out of his revenue when he hears his name and spins around to the source of the noise. Standing on the sidewalk on the other side of his street is a boy from Chan’s art history class. Chan thinks his name is Hansol or something and shouts a greeting back. Hansol waves and then looks at his own hand as if he’s wondering what he’s doing and Chan laughs, and shouts ‘come over here!’ Whilst Hansol (?) is walking over the crossing, Chan briefly wonders if that was a bad idea. He and Hansol have barely ever said two words to each other and now they’re going to attempt to have a full blown conversation together without anyone to turn to if it doesn’t work out. Hansol arrives in front of him and Chan has no excuse but to try his best.  
“Hey man,” he says, “What brings you to this part of Seoul?” Inside, he’s cringing. Why does he sound like one of those creepy tour guides? Before he can answer his own question, Hansol is talking.  
“Got that gallery thing Mr.Kim set us.”  
“Here?” Chan asks, suddenly listening intently, “Like this gallery?”  Hansol looks confused for a second.  
“…Yeah?”  
Chan is also confused.  
“Me too. Wasn’t he supposed to set us a gallery each?”  
“Oh, shit. I don’t know but I’m glad you’re here, bro. I hate walking around these places on my own.”  
Hansol has a nice voice, Chan thinks, very smooth and the way he speaks is messy, like he has no filter and just says what he things. It’s pretty in a way. Chan wishes he could photograph the way it sounds.  
“Hmm,” he says, “I don’t know. I guess it’ll be Kim’s own fault when we turn in photos of the same place.”  
“Yeah,” agrees Hansol, “Wanna go in?”  
Chan nods and they approach the big building, removing their camera covers and beginning to shift through the hundreds of pieces of art and stripping them down to how A-grade worthy they look.

Chan and Hansol spend a lot of time getting shushed for laughing too hard.  
“I didn’t…know…that galleries…were like…libraries,” wheezes Chan between laughs and Hansol shoves a fist in his mouth to stop himself from laughing too hard, one hand fisting Chan’s t-shirt. Chan doesn’t mind. The art is nice, not fantastically amazing but nice, he supposes, different. Some of it’s pretentious as fuck, like three words in bold font on a massive canvas sort of pretentious but he and Hansol are getting good pictures, getting good background information and he guesses that’s all that matters. He likes Hansol’s company, he decides, finds himself hoping that they can hang out more in the future.

They have been wandering around the gallery for the better part of an hour and a half when they stumble into the room of neon signs. It is completely empty when they enter and Chan thanks the fact that he got up so early. Nothing pisses him off more than random people getting in the way of great photo ops. According to Hansol, people only come to pretentious galleries like this in the afternoon and evening, when they’re feeling emotional and their instagram followers are most active. Chan had laughed a lot when he’d said that. The room is beautiful and Chan spends a lot of time taking photos of it. His favourite one is tucked in the corner. It’s simple, the writing neon red and it just reads ‘anarchy’. Chan knows that that’s very ‘fifteen year old boy with an tumblr dedicated to tøp’ of him but he can’t help it. He likes it very much.

When he’s finished, Chan turns around and finds Hansol standing in the middle of the room, seemingly transfixed on what surrounds him. Reds and pinks and blues and greens bounce off of his skin and illuminate Hansol’s features, reflect off of his eyes. Chan takes a moment to appreciate how handsome he is. He’s not ‘generically’ handsome. It’s a sort of quiet thing. He’s not that tall, maybe average but his legs are long and lean. His jaw is defined and his collar bones are too, peaking out from his loose t-shirt. His eyes are brown, nothing incredibly special and yet they seem to be deep, filled with knowledge. This is some indie, tumblr shit, Chan knows, when he kneels down and focuses his camera on the colours dancing off Hansol’s face. The click of the camera seems to shock Hansol out of it because he turns to Chan and laughs.  
“Hey!” he exclaims, “Who said you could take photos of me?”  
Chan laughs and snaps another one of Hansol laughing at him, kind of feels like he wants to use it as wallpaper in his bedroom.  
“I did,” he says as he stands up and Hansol comes towards him, grabs his wrists and manoeuvres Chan’s camera from his hands and into his own. Chan watches him look at the photos for a minute, looks at how slender Hansol’s fingers are.  
“Hey,” Hansol says and lifts the camera to show Chan a picture. It’s the one he’d taken of Hansol looking at him and laughing.  
“Why does this look like the promotion poster of some sappy romance film. Why am I looking at you like that, bro.”  
Chan laughs but it sounds breathy and when he goes to take his camera back, his fingers touch Hansol’s. When Chan looks up, Hansol is already looking at him.

Chan takes in Hansol up close. His long eyelashes are smudges against his cheekbones as he looks down at Chan, who is a couple of inches shorter and his lips are incredibly pink in the artificial lighting of the sign room.  
“You’re really pretty,” Chan blurts out and then slams his hands against his mouth.  
“Shit,” he says, “I meant… okay there’s no coming back from that one but like… if you’re not into that then totally no homo bro.”  
Hansol is looking at Chan, amused.  
“I didn’t really get assigned this gallery,” Hansol says lowly and Chan kind of gulps because his voice sounds very nice.  
“um…what?”  
Hansol is blushing now, any earlier confidence he had gained, gone.  
“I’ve been waiting for an excuse to talk to you since the start of the year.”  
“…oh,” is all Chan can say, “That’s…oh.”  
Hansol laughs.  
“Can I kiss you?” he asks and Chan’s eyes widen.  
“I…sure.”

The hand that is not occupying his camera goes to Hansol’s shoulder when their lips touch and Hansol’s goes to his waist. Chan is feeling kind of dizzy but he pushes closer anyway. He knows that, again, this is some indie shit and there is probably someone at the door taking pictures of them to post on their LGBT blog but right now Chan is focused on swallowing the little gasping noise Hansol made when Chan sneaks his hands up Hansol’s shirt. When Hansol pulls away, he looks kind of messed up, hair messy from where Chan had ran his hands through it and lips even pinker than before.  
“Bruh, I kind of like you,” Chan says and Hansol laughs.  
“I like you too.”   
*  
(Chan now gets revenge on Mingyu and Wonwoo whenever he can and has them both knocking on the wall twice. He still doesn’t like waking up before eleven am but opening his eyes to find Hansol there next to him softens the blow a considerable amount. He was not allowed to use the photo of Hansol as his wallpaper but, as a compromise, has it framed on his bedside table.)


End file.
